by Anthology
The mukambala held his gaze steady again. "Even after your patient died, you say this?"
"How many patients have died because we didn't dare?"
The teacher clapped once, but it was only an acknowledgment, not an affirmation. "If that is your decision, you must make it as an umulaye, because you will never be a nganga."
He was silent, and Mutende realized he was being allowed a final chance. But if the mukalamba was expecting a recantation or a plea, one did not come.
"My choice is made," Mutende said.
He took his cup and wandered past one of the upstairs families singing a funeral song—wulukoshi wakawalila mwana, the eagle has carried off my child. Lelato was there, listening, and he told her.
"You want an umulaye's fostering, at your age?" she asked.
"I've had a fostering already. I am what I am—a sworn mechanic and a forsworn musambilila."
"I told you that awamulaye are jealous of our cures—what makes you think I'd want to share with you?"
"You already have. And if we're jealous of what we know, we'll never build the foundation."
"Yes," she said. They were silent, listening to the funeral chants and watching the dancing begin. "You know that Mapalo left her house to you and me…"
"No, I didn't know," he said, surprised.
"We cared for her, and her children have gone to the ship-clans. The Hornbills will have a claim, but we can pay them some of the rents."
He thought about it for a moment. "And she thought that if she showed us favor, the neighbors wouldn't think that we were the imfwiti who killed her?"
"Some of them may suspect that anyway. That's one thing you need to get used to if you follow the umulaye's path—a street-doctor who fails can be taken for a witch. But I was thinking that if you don't want her rooms, we can turn them into a school."
"A school for awamulaye?" The idea was startling, but it took only a second to seem natural. "Her rooms are small…"
Lelato spread her hands wide to take in the city, and said, "There will be time to grow."
Harlow C. Fallon
http://www.amazon.com/author/harlowfallon
A Long Horizon(Short story)
by Harlow C. Fallon
Originally published in The Immortality Chronicles, part of the Future Chronicles anthology series, curated by Samuel Peralta
Space is a misnomer. If humans weren’t blind to it, they’d see that space is full, teeming with enormous creatures that float and skim through the blackness in the same way that phytoplankton fill the warm waters of Earth’s oceans. I don’t know why humans can’t see them. I see them all.
Even now, they glide and wheel past me, translucent, blinking, some bright and disc shaped, others pale with whip-like appendages that lash the darkness. I can see the stars through them. They move away and then return to hover. I know they see me as I stand here at the port window. They’re curious; not only about me, but about the ship that confines me.
The ship is my prison.
I am a convict aboard the Lonecross; a crew of ten also shares my fate. We are all sentenced to death, but a small, bright hope holds their hearts and minds—a hope for freedom, for an extension of breath and length of days. Their hope is my certainty, but they don’t know that. What we all know is this: their death is kept at bay for as long as possible by my isolation. My immediate company would be fatal to them all.
These are interesting times, full of ironies and paradoxes. The aristocracy has found itself with too much prosperity and too little desire to dirty its hands when dealing with commoners. It’s grown an odd skin of politeness that insists on humanely dealing with its worst dregs, so as not to offend the offenders. This is nothing new; I’ve seen it played out over and over through the years. The people in power change, the justifications change, but underneath the masks, the faces are always the same.
As for the worst lawbreakers, those deserving death, the benevolent method of dealing with them arrived later. A hundred years ago, eyes turned to space and desire to break free of Earth grew. The death penalty was abolished. In its place: a one-in-a-million chance at winning the lottery of the disgraced. Criminals were cajoled into volunteerism, that they might contribute something to give their hopeless, pathetic lives meaning.
These make up the crew of the Lonecross. They’re trained and made useful, then launched into space on a one-way journey, put to work whether they like it or not, for the good of a society that has cast them out like trash into the abyss of space. They’d like to believe they’re explorers of our vast galaxy, but in reality, they’re only maintenance workers on a vessel programmed to observe, record, send back information as it searches for new worlds that might be habitable. They forget about death—until fate snips the final threads of their existence by one cause or another.
But always dangling before their noses is the small hope that they will find that new world where second chances wait to embrace them.
And what of those who deserve the worst death, but are unable to die? Who cannot be killed no matter what torture is inflicted upon them? There is only one such soul on this ship. And I am locked away, isolated. My movements and activities are quietly documented by a computer’s cold eye for the duration of my so-called humane journey. I am the only prisoner ever to meet that description in the past nine hundred years.
I’ve never understood very clearly what sort of monitoring is done, what sort of notes are collected about me, or even why. I imagine some scientists at home want to know my end, if there is one. It’s always best to be mindful of one’s enemies and keep a careful eye on their whereabouts.
And so I remain alone, or almost alone, monitored like the stars and planets along our course. I don’t mind. I’m quite used to it by now. One crewman keeps me company, albeit by voice only. The pulsating diatoms of space keep me company. So does the life maturing inside me.
Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine I’m on that other ship, the Prospect, where I first met my fate. I can almost feel the dizzying rise and fall of its bulk as it succumbs to the troughs and peaks of waves. I smell the pungent tang of salt and ocean decay. I hear the creak and whine of the hull, the thump of wind filling its sails. I close my eyes and I am almost there, where it all began.
***
I’d lived in London all my life. My name was Kate then; I’d just turned eighteen, straining at the fetters of drudgery and poverty in my overcrowded family home, eager for escape, for the freedom of adventure. It arrived in the form of an advertisement. Brides were wanted in the New World; women who were strong of bone and mind and lean of soul, because one had to be of that disposition to survive life in Virginia, let alone the journey there by ship. I felt qualified on all points. And so, without my father’s blessing, I responded to the advertisement. Soon I received a letter from The Virginia Company of London accepting my application and granting my fare to a new world. My mother and father did not say good-bye. I never looked back.
The journey was horrendous. I became so sick I truly thought I would see death before I saw land again. Halfway through the voyage, during a particularly sadistic storm, I considered pitching myself overboard and letting the sea swallow me. I didn’t think I could take any more. I hadn’t eaten in days because the mere thought of food made me retch. I was weak and feverish.
Then the sea calmed. The passengers embraced the relief it brought and slept. But I couldn’t sleep.
After twisting and turning in my bed, I’d had a brief, disturbing dream: a man had kidnapped me, stripped me naked and tied me to a bed spread-eagled, where he proceeded to probe my body with a glowing instrument. When he looked into my eyes, I felt a burning sensation at the back of my head. I was terrified, but finally he untied me and said, “You’ll do.”
I woke in a sweat, and realized my fever had finally broken. I rose and made my way to the deck for some night air, hoping it would bring calm to my frantic heart.
On deck, the ship rocked gently in the small swell o
f the sea. There was no moon, but the stars were so bright and numerous, I thought it might be possible to touch them. I stared out across the dark surface of the water. It was then I noticed a strange glow in its depths.
***
“Time to eat, Kata,” says Ruhan through a speaker in my door. His voice startles me from my thoughts. He calls me by my name, and he’s the only one. I know the others only by combinations of numbers and letters. Ruhan is CR7. I’m CK3, and in my files I’m told I have a suffix: 22, which means I’m extremely dangerous. The crew isn’t allowed to talk to me, although I’ve heard their voices from time to time. They’ve whispered through the speaker: “Hey, CK3, what you got going on in there?” or, “suck my dick, bitch.” Ruhan was no different at first, when he sought me out twenty years ago. But there was something about him that caught my attention. His snide remarks quickly gave way to curiosity; then as time went on, to friendship.
Ruhan fills me in on the goings-on of the crew. I never ask, but he talks as if I want to know. He told me once that I’m the subject of many discussions among the men. They wonder what I am, and why so much effort has been made to send me away and keep me separated. Why didn’t the judges make a special ruling in my case? Why didn’t they humanely euthanize me?
I never say anything. They don’t need to know. I suppose it doesn’t matter. Regardless, Ruhan talks to me. I think he feels sorry for me. Perhaps it’s because I’m the only female on-board. Or he’s simply curious. I never ask him why. I’m grateful for his friendship.
“I have some meat for you,” Ruhan says.
I know it isn’t real meat, with blood in it. It’s a block, processed and shaped to look and taste like meat. But I’m not hungry. I haven’t been hungry in years. I can’t remember the last time I tasted cooked food. I know this is a phase that will soon end. The cycle will come around and I’ll need another kind of food, as I have many times before.
“No, thank you,” I say.
“You have to eat, osita,” he insists. Little bear, he calls me. If only he knew.
“I’ll eat later,” I tell him.
A brief silence hangs beyond the door. “How about we eat together?” he suggests. “Me on this side and you on your side. We’ll eat and we’ll talk. How about that?”
I smile, but of course he can’t see it. Perhaps he hears it in my voice. “CJ9 won’t be too happy with that,” I say. “What if he catches you?”
“CJ can kiss my ass,” Ruhan replies. “What’s he gonna do? Send me to prison?” He laughs at his own joke.
I don’t say anything. Outside, the creatures swim languidly past my window. A sudden, incoherent longing rises in my chest, leaving me feeling fragmented and jumpy. I reach over and push a button. Portal shades descend and hide the view.
A series of clicks and hisses announces the arrival of my meal. A small door in the wall slides open to reveal a plate of food and a cup of water in a steel-reinforced box. I remove them both and set them on the table by my bed. Later I’ll drink the water, but I’ll send the food back to recycling. I don’t need it.
The life growing in my womb feeds me, and in turn eats me. Together, we live.
“Tell me a story, osita,” Ruhan says. “One I haven’t heard before.”
We’ve been on the Lonecross for twenty years. I’ve been telling him stories for the past ten. Perhaps he is the observer after all, the collector of information. He knows more about me than anyone else aboard the ship.
“You’ve heard them all, Ruhan.”
“Guess I have,” he says. “You sound tired.”
“I am.”
“Are you ill?”
“No.”
“Old age, eh?” His concern is brief. Through the speaker I hear him take an eager breath. “Tell me about the alien in the sea, then,” he says. “I like that one.”
I’ve told it a hundred times, it seems. But I comply. “The year was 1620, and I was eighteen,” I begin, as I always do. Ruhan chuckles.
I stop. “What’s funny?”
“That always gets me.”
We’ve discussed this countless times, but he won’t accept it as truth. “You never believe me.”
“That you’re 900 years old? It’s a good story.”
I want to argue with him, to convince him of the truth, but the urge passes, and I continue my story. “I was one of many young women hoping to become wives,” I continue, and I’m transported back once again.
***
I wasn’t the only person who saw the glow under the waves. I was one of a hundred or more passengers looking for opportunity and perhaps love in Virginia. Several had joined me on deck that night, as well as a few of the crew, all of us staring down into the depths, curious and maybe a little frightened of what we saw. One of the crew said, “It’s only the phosphor glow of tiny sea creatures. They cluster together and sometimes they grow in number to the millions. We’ve seen it before.”
That reassured us a little, but still we watched. Soon we realized that the glowing object was rising rapidly and would soon break the surface alongside the ship. We all stumbled back, stifling cries and gasps. The crewman who had offered the explanation leaned over the railing and said, “Damn.” It was all he was able to say before something from our nightmares rose up from the water and rocked our vessel so violently, we lost our footing and fell, grabbing for anything to prevent us from being catapulted overboard.
It was an oval-shaped thing and huge—almost the size of our ship—with a ring of shining eyes pulsating in colors of blue and green. The object slowly circled our vessel. When it completed a full circuit, it stopped, as if considering what to do next. It moved sharply to the left and then to the right, finally hovering a few feet above us, perfectly still and silent. I felt all those eyes scrutinizing, examining, sorting. The others on deck shouted and screamed, scrambling away, but I remained, paralyzed, transfixed by the sight.
A long appendage appeared from beneath the object and lowered itself closer to me. I felt the sensation of heat in the back of my head just as I had in my dream. In my weakened state, the shock and terror were too much. My ears filled with a high-pitched ringing, and all the stars in the night sky winked out.
***
“What happened to the ship?” Ruhan asks. “After you were abducted.”
I realize he’s never asked that question before. “I don’t know.”
“Kept on sailing, maybe. Minus one passenger, eh? Must have been like a hammer to the head: that whole experience, the whole ship telling wild tales of aliens. You think they went crazy after something like that?”
“How would I know that?”
“Seems like it could’ve happened. Maybe the ship sank and they all drowned.”
“Maybe.”
“And that sumbitch dropped you on the beach like nothing happened. What did it do to you?”
“You know what it did to me…what he did to me.”
“But you don’t remember.”
There’s much I remember. But to Ruhan I lie and say, “No. I don’t.” I choose not to share the details of an encounter with a creature so foreign and yet so humanlike that I wanted to both flee from and embrace him. He was altogether beautiful and entirely repulsive, an outsider in the fullest sense of the word, trapped on a world not his own, who knew he’d never see his home again. He did what he needed to do. He made a way to escape, if not for the whole of him, then for a piece.
I knew none of this at the time of my abduction. I was convinced I had died and been carried to hell for my sins. I thought I was facing a demon disguised as an angel of light. Only later in my dreams did the revelations come. But at that first encounter, I thought only of eternal torment. He studied me with a piercing, ferocious gaze that dissected my soul and stitched it back together. His touch burned, but stirred in me an intense longing I couldn’t begin to comprehend. It didn’t ease the pain and terror that overwhelmed me at the insertion of some part of him into my womb.
“So when did
you know you had a baby inside you?” Ruhan asks.
“Not for a while.”
“Until the natives found you.”
“Yes.”
“And you turned cannibal.”
I cringe at the word. I don’t need human flesh. I don’t need blood. I did it for the life within me, my enemy lover who required a particular type of nourishment. I had no choice but to get it for him. I tried to stop myself, but I could no more prevent my burrowing into a brain or a neck or an abdominal cavity than I could prevent my blood from coursing through my veins. At the time I didn’t know the names of those things I craved, but now I can name them: the thymus, pituitary, thyroid, pancreas, liver—those parts rich in vitamins, amino acids, and hormones.
“I don’t consider myself a cannibal,” I say.
“I read your file. It goes back a long time. Hundreds of years. You’ve always been a cannibal.”
“I thought you didn’t believe I was that old.”
He chuckles.
“It’s all true, Ruhan.”
“Yeah, okay, whatever. Let’s just say it is true—”
“In the twenty years we’ve shared space on this ship,” I push, “have my stories ever changed?”
I hear nothing on the other side of the door.
“Do those files lie?” I ask.
Again, nothing.
“Have I wavered in any detail? Added or subtracted? Embellished?”
He considers this, I know, because the tone of his voice changes. Uncertainty, even anxiousness shades his words. “How can you be that old? Are you immortal?”
“He preserves me,” I tell him. “As I’ve said before. Perhaps he will forever.”
“A baby can’t do that.”
“Not a human baby. But he’s not human. Nor a baby.”